Posted by Dubious Dude on 06/11/07 00:36

I have an old laptop that I want to do selective backup on. Rather
than using a 2nd hard drive to mirror the current drive, I'll reduce
risk by backing up to DVD so that I can distribute the info over time
and over DVDs. The problem is that it only has USB 1. The laptop can
take CardBus, however, which can apparently provide USB 2
connectivity. I compared DVD speeds to USB 2 speeds:

http://dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html#4.2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB#USB_signaling

Apparently, the 60MBps of USB 2 is often not realized. Typical speeds
are upto 10-20MBps, and more often at 3MBps. However, 8-16x DVD
speeds range over 10.57-21.13MBps; this really pushes the upper limit
of practical USB 2 speeds, and is an order of magnitude above the
typical 3MBps speed. In practice, has this been a concern?

If so, what is a better solution?

If not, what is a recommended drive and CardBus?

My system is a Dell Inspiron 8000 running Windows 2000.

I intend to use Roxio or Nero to burn the DVD-Rs, sometimes
multisession, sometimes single session (in the lingo of CDs that I got
familiar with). This allows me to read them in standard CD readers
without application-specific software.

I decided against DVD-RAM because it seems less supported, and more
expensive. If the error correction offsets these disadvantages, I'd
be interested in hearing your experience.

Thanks.

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